All In A Day’s Work (Or Maybe A Week…)

A vertically composed Kirby Collage of the cast of Adequacy.

See how the cast seems happy and satisfied, even though there is some kind of Science Fantasy Wasteland going on behind them? That’s because they have had a pretty good week at the Edu-Mountain, which I will briefly recount.

Firstly, my desk is clean. That is because all of my grades are entered, student work returned, and report cards for the fifteen week report are ready to go. The verification of grades is signed and turned in, ahead of schedule. Even Zebra Pony has his spot on my desk back, and he seemed happier for it.

Today is the final day of “Catcher in the Rye” in class. That is a Good Thing, because even though yesterday was an excellent reading, with solid student conversation…I’m pretty done with the book. It has been a month, at this point, and the book is just about at the limits of its welcome, with both the students and with me. Next week will involve culminating assignments related to the book, which will be pretty influential to student grades.

Bringing up another positive point. My students’ grades are more or less solid. Every teacher has to fail some students, it is the nature of the beast, as it were. Still, my fail rates are around twenty percent or under, and generally limited to students who simply fail to do their assignments, and thus can’t really be worked with. That’s okay to me, it speaks to a kind of “fairness” in the system that is hard to achieve. I’m reasonably satisfied with that. Even with a low fail rate, I will still have to fill out about thirty to forty “fail notices” to inform parents that their children are in danger of not passing the course, and in turn, not getting a Diploma.

One English teacher has about one hundred of those to fill out, for a lower number of total students…so I’m feeling good.

In addition, real progress is being made on the car, which is great. That saga is probably nearing its end, because in truth, its a subplot I haven’t been happy about.

Finally, today we are filling out the paperwork during lunch to make the Magic: The Gathering group an Official School Club. That should be pretty fun, as we will be reworking the titles of officers and such to be like Fantasy setting concepts…for instance, and Arch-Chancellor of Governing, instead of a President, and so forth. That paperwork is the first step…the group seems really interested in doing the paperwork so that there can be a Varsity letter in Magic: The Gathering. Since Academic Decathalon has a Varsity Letter, it might be a thing we can do.

The original, uncollaged pencils.

With five weeks remaining to school, I am looking forward to today, where the unit will functionally end, and I should have a good time at lunch, advising on the club paperwork while simultaneously playing Magic with the ever growing group of young people involved. I think about the people that I know who have regular nine to five jobs, where they don’t get to talk about literature, lead intellectual discussions, and take a lunch break to play Magic: The Gathering. They pretty much do the same amount of paperwork as I do, and many of them carry similar levels of stress, for less rewarding endeavours by far. I think about that, on good weeks like this, and I feel pretty happy with the career choices that brought me to this moment.